Handling a ball control offense, Q&A style with OC Shannon Dawson
To refresh, Holgorsen said after the Maryland game: "I'd like to say no, but it probably has some effect. I got impatient, so I don't know if I called the best game. What (Maryland) was doing in their drives, they were huddling and getting on the ball and then waiting 30 seconds. How they do that, I don't know. That's hard to watch. I got impatient. I don't think it's the right thing, but it's human nature."
So asked OC Shannon Dawson about that this week - is it something to look out for?
Kansas State, of course, has a reputation of playing a ball control offense to consume time on the clock.
Short answer: yes.
Dawson: “One thing you got to do is remember it isn’t the end of the world if you have a bad drive. You might not get the opportunity again for a little while, but the bottom line is you’ve got to relax and you can’t press. You can’t feel like you’ve got to score every single play. Run your offense, take what the defense is giving you, and push the football down the field.”
Q: That feeling of needing to score every drive has to rub off on players, no?
Dawson: “No doubt it does. It probably happened Saturday (at Texas Tech) without even speaking. We pressed as an offense, as players, probably as coaches. There’s enough blame to go around. We have to fight against that,” said Dawson.
Q: So you accept it will happen, but do your best to play your game anyway?
Dawson: “They’re going to control the ball. Looking at the plays in the game, typically the other team runs 65 to 69 plays. Heck we ran 92 Saturday (at Texas Tech), we ran 92 meaningless plays because we didn’t do anything with them. What that means is they’re controlling the ball. When we got opportunities we’ve got to make the best of them, that’s the bottom line.”
Q: Thoughts on what you’ve seen from the Kansas State defense?
Dawson: “Exactly what we tell our guys what we want them to be, mentally tough, physical, fly to the ball, play fast, that’s exactly how their defense plays. They don’t do a whole lot schematically, but their guys are hardly ever out of position and they’re always going to rally to the ball and it’s going to be physical. They’re just a physical bunch. If we think the team we played last Saturday was physical than we don’t even have an idea.”